Ability, Victories Aren't Enough To Endear Usf Basketball Coach

January 8, 1986|By Barry Cooper of The Sentinel Staff

TAMPA — You sit across from Lee Rose and he cuts into you with steel-blue eyes, a gaze that is so rigid that it appears Rose is stalking a target. In a way, life has become a lot like guerrilla warfare for Rose, the University of South Florida's embattled basketball coach. He is considered a brilliant tactician, able to mentally dissect the most complex defense or construct the most intricate offense. But the one thing Lee Rose has not been able to do is make people love him.

They take pot shots at Rose at South Florida, directing their barbs at him through newspaper articles or by attending games with brown bags pulled over their faces. They complain that Rose won't play tough teams, that he cannot recruit, that he is not sensitive to the wishes of the student body. The detractors are both common fans and people employed by the university.

Certainly Rose, 49, is not widely appreciated at South Florida, where he has built a 99-57 record in just more than five seasons. He had critics at two of his other coaching stops, too, the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and Purdue.

It is Rose's unyielding personality that gets him in trouble. He will not make small talk with people he does not like and is not fond of all the mushy handshakes and false smiles coaches are expected to deliver. At South Florida, he has become a human powder keg, and his never-ending insistence that things be done only his way begs his critics to go ahead and light the fuse.

Rose's temper has exploded more than a few times. Moments after a 1984 homecoming victory over UNC-Charlotte, Rose, frustrated by a lack of fan support, grabbed the microphone at the Sun Dome. ''All this school has ever had is a bad image,'' he said. ''We're trying to give it a damn positive one. Get behind us!''

They haven't rallied around Rose. Monday night, South Florida played an important Sun Belt Conference game against Alabama-Birmingham -- the county's 14th ranked team. A crowd of 2,945 showed up in the Sun Dome, which seats 10,257.

Poor attendance, budget cuts -- nearly $90,000 was pared from Rose's budget this season -- and infighting among USF officials has sullied Rose's dream of building the Bulls into a national power. Not that Rose has done badly. His teams, aided by a weak nonconference schedule, have posted five consecutive winning seasons and participated in the National Invitation Tournament three times. And Rose boasts that more than 90 percent of his players have earned their degrees.

Still, finger-pointing is rampant on the campus because the Bulls have not built a Top 20 program and because other such lofty expectations have not been met.

''You name it, and I've taken a pounding for it here,'' Rose said. ''It doesn't matter what it is.''

The most celebrated confrontation Rose has had was with John Wadas, the former athletic director. Both men are reluctant to discuss the matter, but the popular contention is that Wadas wanted to build a broad-based program and spread money evenly over all the Bulls' sports while Rose wanted basketball emphasized. By the time Wadas resigned last summer, the Bulls' athletic office was full of dissension and saddled with a $650,000 debt.

Rose doesn't duck the Wadas matter. ''He put us $500,000 in debt and blamed me. He took the whole staff and unified them against me so that I'm the guy doing all the things wrong and they are doing all the right things, which was total nonsense.''

Wadas, who was transferred to a non-athletic job at the university's Fort Myers campus, was unavailable for comment.

The bickering and money problems are starting to take a toll. When assistant coach Mark Wise resigned after last season, Rose was unable to replace him because of budgetary restrictions.

When Rose was in Japan this summer for the World University Games, school president Dr. John Brown agreed to play crosstown rival Tampa, a Division II school. That move went against Rose's wishes, and he burns inside now that it has been done.

''I did not know the budget was going to be cut or I was going to lose a coach or they were going to schedule Tampa until I got back from Japan,'' he said. ''They told me when I got back. The president told me, 'You're going to play Tampa.' And I said, 'The fallout from this game is going to be devastating and you're going to see it.' We have hung our whole program here, and I've given 400 talks in this community, about being a solid, respectable Division I program. And since I have been here, we have scheduled nothing but Division I teams.''

Not all the Division I teams on the schedule have been powers. ''I am trying to build a program, and you don't build an office building at the 10th floor,'' he said. ''You can't build a basketball program starting at the top.''